Embodied Carbon is a service (soon to be available) that is maintained and developed by the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Foundation and that provides access to data and maps of the embodied-carbon associated with the replacement of residential, commercial and industrial buildings around the world. This service can be used in various studies on the built environment, such as: i) to provide benchmark data on the embodied carbon of different building typologies; ii) to assess the environmental impact of natural hazards on the built environment; and iii) to assess the impact on the global carbon budget of different forecasts of urbanisation.

To develop the Database of Embodied Carbon per Building Typology we have identified the main building typologies in terms of lateral load resisting system and main material (classified with the GEM Building Taxonomy v3.1) with which we construct buildings today in Europe. For each building typology we have identified the main structural members and non-structural components, their construction materials and their quantities (per square metre of built area).

Upfront embodied carbon factors (comprising modules A1 to A5, according to the European standard EN 15978) for each component have been collected from a number of online, open sources (e.g. Environmental Product Declarations for different European countries). For each building typology we combine the quantity of components with the corresponding carbon factors in order to obtain the embodied carbon per square metre of built area. All of this data will soon be made available in an online database.

Illustration to demonstrate the components of embodied carbon, operational carbon and whole life cycle carbon (inspired by RMI)*.

To produce Maps of the Embodied Carbon due to the Replacement of European Buildings, we have built upon the European exposure models developed and released by the EFEHR European Seismic Risk Services. These models describe the spatial distribution of existing building classes in terms of built area for 44 European countries; we have reprocessed the models by replacing the existing building typologies with those we would expect to use to ‘build back better’ today. These updated exposure models have then been combined with the embodied carbon per typology in order to produce maps of the total embodied carbon at different administrative levels. Web services for these maps at the European scale will soon be available from this website.

Workflow and example map for Italy of the embodied carbon due to the replacement of buildings through a ‘build back better’ policy.

*Attribution link: Icons made by Good Ware from www.flaticon.com.